And at this moment, Fortescue, whose image had been lingering in Betty's memory, suddenly came to the front. She saw him in her mind's eye, galloping past the window, his military cloak around him, his cap set firmly on his handsome head, his look, his attitude, everything about him, proclaiming the soldier. Betty's smile changed from mirth to one of dreamy anticipation. There is much flavor in the wine of life at twenty.
She went to the window, and, putting her hands on each side of her eyes, so that she could look out into the gathering gloom of the winter night, saw afar off the windows of Rosehill shining with light. On the day after Christmas she would see that young soldier again. Betty made a rapid calculation--it would be just twenty-six hours. At the thought a smile began in Betty's soft eyes and ended on her rosy lips.
Beginning with Christmas Eve, there was a party every night for Betty, and as wind and weather count for nothing where merry young people are concerned, Betty prepared to go, in spite of the biting cold, and a knife-like wind that came howling down from Labrador. Uncle Cesar was to take her to the parties, in the little, old-fashioned rockaway, drawn by the one horse which was all the stable of Holly Lodge could boast. The homeliness of her equipage did not in the least disconcert Betty.
"Because," as Betty said to herself, "everybody knows I am Betty Beverley of Rosehill, and the Rosehill Beverleys can do as they please about carriages and clothes, and a blessed good thing it is, as the family is down on its luck at present."
Betty had a variety of euphemisms to disguise the unpleasant facts of life. Poverty was being down on one's luck; simple clothes were a joke; and shabbiness, a mere romantic incident, for such was the glorious philosophy of pretty Betty.
There were, however, no sighs or regrets for Betty that Christmas Eve, as she looked with shining eyes into her mirror. Her white gown, made by her own clever fingers, fitted to perfection, and revealed all the delicate loveliness of her white neck and her slender arms. Around her throat was her great-grandmother's amethyst necklace, and her simple bodice was draped with her great-grandmother's lace bertha. Her rich hair, with its soft tendrils curling upon her neck, was adorned with a wreath of ivy leaves, and tiny moss rosebuds from the rosebush in the window of the sitting-room. This little wreath gave Betty the look of a woodland nymph. Aunt Tulip, who acted as lady's maid, during the intervals of her duty as cook, housemaid, and what not, was lost in admiration, and suggested that Betty would "cert'n'y ketch a beau." This simple flattery delighted Betty, especially as all the time she was dressing her mind was fixed upon the charms of Lieutenant John Hope Fortescue of the United States Army.